Stratford, Ont. band gets its big break on popular hockey podcast

Big break for Stratford band CTV’s Jeff Pickel explains how Small Town Strip Club’s single “Cheap Shot” ended up on a popular hockey podcast.

A Stratford, Ont. band has gotten its big break in an unusual way – through a popular hockey podcast.

The four members of Small Town Strip Club told CTV News their story, which of course, began with explaining how they got their name.

“I think it went back to a gig we had in Stratford where we had to give the bar a band name for our bar tab and came up with Small Town Strip Club,” said John Yundt, the guitarist and vocalist.

The band formed in 2017 and have mostly played local shows.

That was until March of this year when they heard the Spittin' Chiclets podcast was looking to replace their intro with original music.

“I told the band that we should bring [the song] Cheap Shot to the studio and put together a pitch to make Cheap Shot the new Chiclets intro music,” recalled Yundt.

After some initial interest, talks with the podcast stalled until Spittin' Chiclets asked fans to weigh in.

“That seemed to be the moment that got it across the finish line,” Yundt said.

Cheap Shot made its debut on the podcast on Dec. 5.

The band then noticed a big jump in listeners.

“All of the sudden my phone just started blowing up and people are messaging us, messaging the Instagram, and congratulating us,” said drummer Jimmy Flood laughing. “At one point I’m thinking: ‘What for?’”

More importantly, the band is getting more opportunities.

“We were growing at a decent rate before but now it’s kind of increasing at a rapid rate [so] that we can play those bigger shows that we want to play [and] more bands are reaching out to us,” Flood said.

While the band isn’t quite ready to quit their day jobs, it is another big step towards that rock n’ roll dream.

“Right now I’d say we are riding that wave and seeing where that wave takes us,” Flood explained. “We are going to try and create more music and see where that takes us.”